December 21, 2016 AT 1:00 am

How to Make a Powerful Zelda Princess Hilda Staff #WearableWednesday @amiedoubleD #Cosplay #Arduino

When Amie D.D. decided she would have her birthday party at the National Video Game Museum in Frisco, Texas, she also decided she would need an amazing character cosplay to go along with the theme. She chose Princess Hilda from The Legend of Zelda: Link Between Worlds and not only put together a great outfit, but fabricated her own LED blinking staff. She combined 3D printing skills and electronics to make a powerful Triforce accessory.

The 3D printed parts are centered around an acrylic pole, which just happens to be the perfect base for an Adafruit Neopixel ring powered by a Gemma microcontroller. For the Triforce topper, another Gemma microcontroller is joined by two Neopixel sticks for some solid glow. Gemma is tiny so it is a great choice for wearables, and as Amie says, “Neopixels make everything better!”

Amie is already getting a lot of attention from friends and fans for her latest cosplay work. You can check out notes for this project on Hackster, including schematics and code. She has been getting hounded for the 3D print files and promises to post those soon, so stay tuned. Personally, I think her entire outfit is great, especially the belt and ears. So, hopefully she’ll give more details on the other accessories, too. Do you have a cosplay that needs some magic like a rainbow of lights or a flash of white? Check out our learning guide for Let’s Put LEDs in Things and then whip up something fantastic. From dollar store tricks to dazzling Neopixels, there’s plenty of choices to get the effect you need.

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Stop breadboarding and soldering – start making immediately! Adafruit’s Circuit Playground is jam-packed with LEDs, sensors, buttons, alligator clip pads and more. Build projects with Circuit Playground in a few minutes with the drag-and-drop MakeCode programming site, learn computer science using the CS Discoveries class on code.org, jump into CircuitPython to learn Python and hardware together, TinyGO, or even use the Arduino IDE. Circuit Playground Express is the newest and best Circuit Playground board, with support for CircuitPython, MakeCode, and Arduino. It has a powerful processor, 10 NeoPixels, mini speaker, InfraRed receive and transmit, two buttons, a switch, 14 alligator clip pads, and lots of sensors: capacitive touch, IR proximity, temperature, light, motion and sound. A whole wide world of electronics and coding is waiting for you, and it fits in the palm of your hand.